UNI trails Belmont from start to finish in MVC men’s basketball opener

CEDAR FALLS — A 17-4 deficit less than five minutes into the game proved too much to overcome as Northern Iowa fell short in its Missouri Valley Conference men’s basketball opener to Belmont Wednesday night, 90-70.

The Bruins’ game-opening run included seven points from leading scorer Cade Tyson, who proved difficult to guard throughout en route to a game-high 22 points.

A technical foul issued to UNI coach Ben Jacobson gave Belmont (5-3, 1-0) two more points during the early run as the Panthers coach vehemently argued against an out-of-bounds call that went in the Bruins’ favor.

“I didn’t do a good enough job with our two days of prep,” Jacobson said. “Belmont throws a lot at you and (associate head coach P.J. Hogan) did a great job with the scout and identifying what we needed to be locked into, but I didn’t do a great job of organizing it. Our practices were OK and coming out of the three games that we just played in the (Battle 4 Atlantis) in the Bahamas we shouldn’t come back to practices that are okay. The two practices needed to be really, really good.”

The bench got the Panthers (2-5, 0-1) back within 10 by the under-12 media timeout. Once UNI’s starters checked back in, a group effort provoked a 10-0 run that included a Trey Campbell 3, offensive rebound and put-back from Tytan Anderson and two Nate Heise layups, one of which that turned into a three-point play after a baseline cut and assist from Cole Henry.

UNI trailed 37-31 at halftime. An Anderson layup got UNI within two possessions at 43-39 with 16:53 to play, but it was the closest the Panthers got to drawing even as a 21-5 Belmont run transpired the following five minutes.

“The guys obviously didn’t expect this at all,” Jacobson said. “Just talked (postgame) about defend and rebound until we get some momentum on offense. Until we get going a little bit just stick in there defensively. (Six) point game coming out of half, it’s a ballgame. We kind of had a second life there that we didn’t take advantage of.”

UNI was only able to trim a 25-point deficit to 17 with three minutes remaining.

“We didn’t have (toughness) at the same level that Belmont had it tonight,” Jacobson said. “So now you’ve got to figure out exactly as much as we can why it was that way.”

Ja’Kobi Gillespie, Malik Dia and Keishawn Davidson joined Tyson in double figures with 18, 16 and 14 points, respectively.

Belmont finished the game shooting 53 percent from the floor (30-57) and 50 percent from 3 (11-22).

Campbell led UNI with 13 points and was joined in double figures by Michael Duax, who added 12 off the bench.

UNI travels to Evansville (6-1, 0-1) Saturday for a 1 p.m. tip-off at Ford Center.